Uri Friedman, "Why Conservative Parties Are Central to Democracy," The Atlantic, June 14, 2017

Interview with Daniel Ziblatt on his new book, Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy:

There’s no stronger predictor of democratic stability than GDP per capita. The wealthier countries are, the more likely they are to be democratic. That’s the biggest moving force around the world.

Wilkinson on McCloskey and Social Justice

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/the-great-enrichment-and-social-justice/

Cohen_N, The Cowardice of John Le Carre

From British journalist Nick Cohen’s “The Cowardice of John Le Carré” for the April issue of Standpoint magazine, a passage about the author’s “post-Cold War politics”: 

From the Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2016


Connoisseurs of his public statements can tick every space on the bingo card. Le Carré believes that corporations brainwash the bovine masses (check) on behalf of the imperial American hegemon (check) which is itself controlled by a conspiracy of right-wingers (check) who are pulling our puppet strings at the behest of—guess who?—the Jews (full house!). Or as le Carré explained, the neoconservatives are “appointing the state of Israel as the purpose of all Middle Eastern and practically all global policy.”

Then there is the self-pity, that most deplorable affectation of Western intellectuals, who have never once faced the smallest threat of persecution or punishment for their writing. At one point during the last decade, le Carré compared himself to the German-Jewish diarist Victor Klemperer, who miraculously survived life under the Nazis. Liberals of a certain age remember that when the Ayatollah Khomeini’s assassins imitated the Nazis and threatened Salman Rushdie’s life the Klemperer de nos jours opined that Rushdie had brought death on himself by insulting the great religion of Islam.

Forrest McDonald on Leftist Puritans

Notable & Quotable: Historian Forrest McDonald

‘It is leftists, not conservatives, who are Puritans, who want to make people over in accordance with their views.’

Historian Forrest McDonald, who died Jan. 19 at age 89, writing in a 1999 Commentary magazine symposium on the results of the 1998 midterm elections:

Still—to turn to the editors’ second question—there can hardly be room to doubt that the nation has undergone a grave decline in its moral standards. Relativism and permissiveness have won; “sensitivity” toward the behavior of others, no matter how despicable, has won; the notion that self-esteem is more important than achievement has won.

Many reasons for the decline can be adduced, not least among them being the intrusiveness into our lives of the corruption that pervades Washington. Earlier, the Grant and Harding administrations were corrupt, but the scandals had virtually no impact upon society; the federal government had nothing to do, for example, with the way parents raised their children. Now, by contrast, the government pokes its nose into everything, including standards of morality. To cite but one kind of instance, the Catholic church’s charities and the Salvation Army, which have been traditional carriers of religion and morality as well as of succor, now refrain from espousing religion and morality, lest they lose their government funding.

It is federal money that corrupts: take their money and they own you. Most people probably know this but are willing to take the money anyway. I once heard Frank Sinatra say on a talk show that it was easy enough to get along with the Mafia. “Just don’t ever let them do you a favor.” The same advice applies to the federal government.

Nevertheless, despite the general moral decline, I would insist that there is no widespread neo-Puritan impulse among conservatives. It is leftists, not conservatives, who are Puritans, who want to make people over in accordance with their views—in myriad ways, ranging from stamping out smoking to imposing correct thought; and that has been true since Rousseau. They constitute the most serious threat to our cherished freedoms.

Mark Perry on the Middle Class Getting Richer

http://www.aei.org/publication/yes-americas-middle-class-has-been-disappearing-into-higher-income-groups/

Jerry Brown on Government Power

http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article48466200.html

Sumner on Reasoning from a Price (interest rate) Change

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/02/reasoning_from_1.html

(Shiller seems to believe that) throughout history the most common cause of changes in interest rates is a shift in the supply of credit. Perhaps in most cases lower interest rates are associated with more investment. If that were true, his mistake would be more forgivable. But the truth is exactly the opposite. Shifts in the demand for credit are usually the dominant factor. In the vast majority of cases, relatively low interest rates are associated with low levels of investment and relatively high interest rates are associated with high levels of investment. So there is no "puzzle" on either theoretical grounds (theory doesn't predict more investment) or empirical grounds (low interest rates are not usually associated with high levels of investment.)

This sort of mistake is frequently made by economists, even economists that are much more distinguished than I am. Why does it matter? Because it's one cause of the Great Recession. If the Great Recession had been associated with interest rates rising from 5% to 8% (instead of falling close to zero) most economists would have blamed the recession on a tight money policy at the Fed. Well the recession was caused by a tight money policy at the Fed, but because most economists reason from price changes they did not see this. Hence the Fed was under no pressure to do the right thing. And when big government institutions are under no pressure to do the right thing, they rarely do the right thing.